ome of Pericles there was none, a woman merely of the
Xantippe type from whom he separated by common consent and put Aspasia,
not in her inferior place, but on a pedestal before which he knelt.
Aspasia became not merely his wife but his inspiration, his comrade, his
aid. She worked for him and with him. She encouraged him in his work,
accompanied him in his battles, consoled him in his fatigues, entertained
his friends, talked philosophy with Socrates, frivolity with Alcibiades,
art with Pheidias, but love to him, displaying what Athens had socially
never seen, the spectacle of delicacy, culture, wit, beauty, and ease
united in a woman, and that woman a woman of the world.

The sight, highly novel, established a precedent and with it fresh
conceptions of what woman might be. In the _Iliad_, she was money. Money
has a language of its own. In the enchanted islands of the _Odyssey_ she
was charm. Charm has a more distinct appeal. In Lesbos she was emancipated
and that made her headier still. But in the opulent Athenian nights
Aspasia revealed her not physically attractive merely, not personally
alluring only, not simply free, but spirituelle, addressing the mind as
well as the eye, inspiring the one, refining the other, captivating the
soul as well as the senses, the ideal woman, comrade, helpmate, and
sweetheart in one.

Like the day it was too fair. Presently the duel occurred. Lacedaemon,
trailing the pest in her tunic, ravaged the Eleusinian glades. Pericles
died. Aspasia disappeared. The duel, waning a moment, was resumed. It
debilitated Sparta, exhausted Athens, and awoke Thebes, who fell on both
but only to be eaten by Philip.

It would have been interesting to have seen that man and his Epeirote
queen who hung serpents about her, played with them among poisonous weeds
and who, because of another woman, killed her king, burned her rival
alive, and gave to the world Alexander.

It would have been more interesting still to have seen the latter when,
undermined by every vice of the vicious East, with nothing left to
conquer, with no sin left to commit, with no crime left undone, he
descended into the great sewer that Babylon was and there, in a golden
house, on a golden throne, in the attributes of divinity was worshipped as
a god. Behind him was a background of mitred priests and painted children,
about him were the fabulous beasts that roamed into heraldry, with them
was a harem of three hundred and sixty-five oda